The government will give its initial reaction to the Chalmers report on the State of Higher Education Funding in the forthcoming budget speech on 24 November, Minister for Education, Youth and Employment Louis Galea said yesterday.
Speaking at the launch of the report, Dr Galea outlined the process of consultation which should, according to the government’s plans, lead to the implementation of the new structures by the beginning of the next academic year at the end of September.
In December, the government will organise the way in which consultations will be held in order to draw up a timetable of meetings with all stakeholders.
The consultation process will take place between January and March, with dialogue and possibile negotiations with all the stakeholders, with the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development (MCESD), and Parliament.
In April and May, the government will start analysing the whole process in order to formulate the policy and strategy decisions. At the same time, the accounting system for the education system will be changed in preparation for the implementation of the new structures.
In June, the government will start making the decisions with the aim of having the new structures in place and being implemented at the beginning of the next academic year in September/October.
“My agenda is to re-shape the whole education landscape, from early childhood education to lifelong learning,” Dr Galea said.
He thanked Roderick Chalmers, Jacques Sciberras and Anne Marie Thake for accepting to be part of the working group which compiled the report. “We also had Professor Peter Serracino Inglott behind the scenes. He was originally nominated to be part of the group but preferred to play the role of consultant on the different issues,” said Dr Galea.
He said he was “extremely satisfied, happy and grateful” that the working group adhered to the October time frame the government set, “that they have consulted all stakeholders across the board as I had wished them to – Unions, political parties, the Opposition, the government – and that they have now come out with this report”.
Dr Galea emphasised the importance of engaging in “a mature” debate. “If this debate degenerates, as it so often happens on very important issues, then we shall have to say what Christ told to the woman in Jerusalem ‘Do not cry for me, cry for your children’.
“We need a great deal of maturity. And we do not have an excuse. The process that I set in motion from day one was to foster this maturity in the way that consultations have already taken place, in the way the report has been developed,” he said.
Dr Galea described the report as “an extremely good basis, it is factual, it is statistical, it is researched, and I think we have a very good basis to do this sort of thing”.
He insisted: “This is not an exercise about stipends (...) it is a very complex process, it covers economics, social, financing, managerial issues, political issues.
“It is very complex and it would be a great pity if one were to simply focus on any particular issue to try to make hay while the sun shines,” said Dr Galea.
He declared that until now the government was “not bound by any of the recommendations made in the report. This does not mean that it does not have any ideas or indications of positions it will take.
“However, in order to guarantee that I would have put everything in order conducive to a mature debate, I do not want to enter into this discussion with any prejudice. The debate is open and we want a wide discussion.”
“The government will not ignore the facts. We cannot not take into consideration the reality we are facing. Moreover, we are not ready to propose partial solutions and half-baked measures,” he insisted.
Dr Galea said the report has presented us with a number of choices. “These are the choices we have to discuss.
“What came out from the report is that this is not a question of saying one choice is good and the other is bad. It is a question of what kind of policy you want to choose and what the possibilities are.”
Dr Galea said it was important that this issue is not trapped in the “web of partisanship” because in education, what you sow today you do not reap tomorrow but usually much later.
“If we do good things today, these good things will be ready for future governments, whoever those will be. If these things remain bad, future governments will be faced with the same bad things. We need to be serious and responsible,” he said.
Dr Galea said this issue was “not related to the deficit question, neither immediately nor in the future. Nine million liri of maintenance grants out of a budget of a billion liri bears no relationship to the structural deficit.”
“I think the policy and strategy followed by different governments over the past 50 years have now reach their climax. Fifty years ago we started with the aim of providing eduction for everybody. We have now obtained that.
“Now we have to go into a new orbit – we want a quality education for everybody, and this requires a different approach from that used till now,” he said.
Dr Galea explained this was
not a question of controlling
in education, because education will be costing more anyway. If the demographic numbers stabilise at the lower levels of the education system, they will explode at the higher levels.
“Every government is conscious that the post-secondary, vocational and tertiary sector will cost more,” he said.
“It is true that we will be investing more, spending more, but we must have more guarantees that we will be spending better, more effectively. Every stakeholder must take a look around and ask whether what it has now can be spent in a more effective manner, acquire more value and improve quality of the output.
“So structures will have to be changed in order to achieve this. (...) We cannot work with the administrative, structural, legal, managerial and accounting systems that we have used till now. Everything has to be changed,” Dr Galea continued.
He called on the educational institutions to make maximum use of new information technology structures. “In the private sector, those educational institutions which are affiliated to foreign universities and colleges are making ever-increasing use of distance learning.
“If we continue to look at education from the perspective of a classroom, we will remain at the beginning of the previous century. Our classroom is not only that behind those four walls,” insisted Dr Galea.
He pledged that in spite of the reform, “the doors of the educational system of the university, the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), and other (post-secondary) schools will be open to everyone. There will be nothing, not least money, that will prevent anyone who wants and is able to enter these institutions.”
“Let us rise to the occasion. And you need courage and commitment to do this,” said Dr Galea.
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